It's impossible to work in the garden without coming into contact with spiders. I've gotten used to it. It's the flying, buzzing insects (bees, wasps, hornets, etc.) that make my blood run cold.
so true eva.
the one bug that TRULY gives me the creeps..
( dont laugh )
A june-bug.
Those things fly so crazy, they always get stuck in my hair. They are loud and creepy looking...
: shudder :
cant stand the little creeps!
The bad and the good of spiders
I don't remember what kind it was or if she ever knew. She found a red mark on her face, just below her right cheekbone. First it got a little swollen and she thought, she said later, that it was a really bad zit, but the usual compresses and waiting did nothing.
After four days, after it turned black, she went to her doctor.
The bite turned out to be not the problem. It was what was in the bite, a bacteria whose only purpose is to consume flesh. Massive antibiotic doses, and her doctor said, her previous aversion to taking any antibiotics, saved her life.
Her face was reconstructed from bits of buttock flesh and expanded skin grafts. Except for a thin, amoeba shaped scarline, easily covered by makeup, no one knows what happened.
She had done two, maybe three, things right.
1) She had a doctor. In America, going to the Emergency Room for something like this would have been a death sentence.
2) She had eschewed the overuse of antibiotics for previous ailments, thereby causing the effectiveness of the dosages to be greater, that's at least the theory of her physician. Anyone can weigh in on that.
3) She didn't wait as long as some others might have.
Joe(On the other hand, see below)Nation
Before we became Easterners, we used to take vacations at a little mountain cabin camp outside of Eureka Springs, Arkansas. The "cabins" were palatial, with large glass windows for seeing out of and redwood decks for loafing, cloud-watching, leaf-crunch listening and starlight wondering. I spent an entire ten days keeping track of the hunting and trapping techniques of a little brown spider.
What a completely remarkable creature the spider is and this one in particular. On the second day, a honeybee on it's way to the rosebushs crashed into her web. It struggled and tore at the web almost getting free, but ended up just tying itself to two or three strands that left it spinning and twirling about three inches below the ripped up web.
The spider came out after about ten minutes and proceeded to make repairs. The bee had exhausted itself and was no longer making any moves. After an hour with the web was complete again I thought the spider would cut the strands holding the bee. It was too heavy for her to haul up after all but what she did was make the bee into bait.
Without ever touching the bee, she wove a second, smaller, web all around it. This took about two hours and in that time the sun had become to bake the bee very nicely. No sooner had she withdrawn to the upper web then two houseflies came around to investigate what was smelling so bad, uh, so good. One landed on the bee, the other -oops- ended up flatwinged in the shiny new webbing.
Down came the spider to wrap him up.
After lunch, I noticed that she had three little packages all snugly lined up in the upper web, while the bee web had been left abandoned, with the bee, a little worse for wear, still making little turns in the summer breezes.
My friend is the same.
We were talking in the bathroom once(dont ask)and I looked down while she was talking and saw a spider.This automatically made her look down, she pushed past me and stood in the bath til it was got rid of.
Joe,
that sounds like the brown recluse...?
Not the one on the porch, the one that bit my friend who knows? Her theory was she rolled over on it while asleep. (She was not the best housekeeper in the Mid-West.)
There's all kinds of spiders and they all bite.
Joe(Even the daddy-long legs)Nation
there is one spider here in tx that I just LOVE.
Scared sheetless of it, but WOW it is beautiful.
Its leg spread gets to be about the size of a dinner plate. If it is quiet, and the spider is on concrete , you can hear faint footsteps. Creeppppyyy!!
The web it spins is doubled in the center almost like a slip knot. Its body is yellow and black.
I , for the life of me , do not know what kind of spider it is. You find it in huge open fields. Usually strung up between large plants like corn stalks. Thier web is about the size of a small car tire and on a clear day, you can see them from the street.
VERY beautiful spiders.
VERY VERY much the thing of nightmares though...
big, furry, :shudder:
i will stop there. :-)
So you are out picking corn for the Memorial Day picnic when you feel this tug on your sleeve....
shewolfnm wrote:so true eva.
the one bug that TRULY gives me the creeps..
( dont laugh )
A june-bug.
Those things fly so crazy, they always get stuck in my hair. They are loud and creepy looking...
: shudder :
cant stand the little creeps!
When I was younger, I took the screen out of my window to sit in it late one night and a june bug came flying in. I remember whacking carelessly around with the screen until I finally hit it down. They are such bumbling and stupid bugs. I hate them too.
YIKES! June bugs! Hate 'em! They're the same size as hornets, but even louder! And they like to crash into you before you can get a good look at what they are!!!
LEMME OUTTA HERE!!!!!!!! <runs off screaming, arms waving in air>
The black and yellow spider sounds like what Mom calls "Charlotte" - her garden spider. Really freaked me out last summer. I kept begging her to kill it, move it, get it away from the house where I had to see it every time I wanted to sit on the screen porch.
She refused. Charlotte eats all the nasty bugs you don't want in your garden damaging your crop. She's a "good spider" (haha, yeah, like there is such a thing!) Mom says she won't bite, attack or otherwise harm a human.
During my time there I never saw her spell out "good pig" or anything, so I'm not sure if Mom is right.
charlotte is a COMMON name for those.
My grandparents called thier spider the same thing.
When Mr Wolf saw one for the first time, he called it the same thing.
When my mother lived here, she said the same thing
hmmm..
Maybe they just dont spell in english?
I have no idea where my aversion to spiders came from, either.
I grew up on a farm, for goodness sakes. I put up hay, played in the hayloft, laid in the fields eating the little yellow clover flowers, and kept my boots in the garage where it wasn't uncommon to dump a brown recluse out if you flipped the boot over before putting it on. In putting up hay the bailer wrapped up all sorts of things, including spiders and snakes. Some snakes were mowed over and became part of the bail, others showed up after the cutting and were alive as we grabbed bails and tossed them high to the top of the almost full wagon.
Black snakes were most common, since the mowing stirred up dinner for him. But, we were also in rattle snake country. Sure, they give a warning, but you don't hear it over the machinery.
I have been bitten by small spiders as I reached into dark places for a saddle pad or sweat blade, but nothing venemous.
Like I said, I have no idea where my fear of spiders and snakes came from since it didn't appear until I became a city girl.
S (I don't like spiders and snakes, but that aint what it takes to love me) quinney
Great post, Joe. Glad your friend was so lucky! The very real dangers of some spiders add to that frisson of fear, don't they?
Loved your story about the little spider. I think, for all ages, watching creatures like spiders is a valuable way to spend time. Teaches you both humility and wonder.
It is a shame to be afraid of critters, Bella. They are interesting and share your world. My husband was looking at a website called "Living Jewels" last night. He kept calling me over to observe and admire some new bug. They were remarkable:
http://www.living-jewels.com/
Maybe you could look at those and erode some of your totally understandable reaction to Creepy-Crawlers?
( forgive me if the photos dont work. I am having problems with a video card on this big old lumpy computer Im using and I cant see it myself...)
The Black and Yellow Argiope is a common orb web spider. Orb web means it spins a web like a circle.
Female spiders are much larger than males, growing almost an inch and a half long. Males grow about 3/4 inch long. Both spiders have a cephalothorax (small front body section) with silver hairs on it. The abdomen (large back section) is egg-shaped with black and yellow coloring.
Legs of these spiders are black with red or yellow bands. Each leg has three claws on the end.
Black and Yellow Argiopes live in fields and gardens. They can be found on shrubs, tall plants, and flowers.
The web of this spider spirals out from the center and can be two feet across. The female builds the large web, and a male will build a smaller web on the outer part of her web. The male's web is a thick zig-zag of white silk
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.fcps.k12.va.us/StratfordLandingES/Ecology/Arthropods/Black%2520and%2520Yellow%2520Garden%2520Spider/byargiope8m1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.fcps.k12.va.us/StratfordLandingES/Ecology/mpages/black_and_yellow_argiope.htm&h=738&w=690&sz=83&tbnid=gv9xY6NrTcoJ:&tbnh=138&tbnw=129&hl=en&start=4&prev=/images%3Fq%3D%2Byellow%2Band%2Bblack%2Bspider%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D
CRAVEN!!!!!!
Get those DANG SPIDERS off my Computer!!!!!!
(I was just working up the nerve to kiss Brad, when he got replaced with creepy crawlys))
I was on A2K last night when a spider came out of nowhere and crawled across my hand as I was typing. I hoped this was on the screen so I could type "THERE'S A SPIDER ON ME RIGHT NOW!!!" but by the time I got to search he was gone.
Gone gone as in smack gone? Or, just gone like he ran away?
There's a floor vent close to my computer desk and the last couple of times I've been on this thread it has kicked on, blowing across my feet and the initial contact making me feel like there's a spider on me.
(I've never danced better)
Now I gotta put up with 'em on myA2K screen?
Ran away. Be nice to spiders!
OK, I admit it... I don't always follow that rule. The other day, there was a spider in the bathroom sink. I didn't like the looks of 'im. Fangs. Little guy (or girl, who knows), but definite fangs. I turned on the faucet and washed him/her down the drain. Left the water on a good long time. <whistles guiltily>
Then, a while later, I went back and there he/she was again. Sitting there in the same spot, glaring at me. This time I grabbed some tp, smooshed, and flushed down the toilet.
Er.
This one (the running-across-my-hand one) wasn't fangy though, just spry.
